Biden: Fractured GOP Is the Problem

Vice President Joe Biden said the administration will take its jobs bill directly to the American people to put pressure on Republican members of Congress to pass it.

Despite the conventional wisdom that the bill is dead on arrival, Biden said, "What happens that gets it passed is we have to go to the people. That's what the president says and it's been my point of view for a while now. We should go to the people and we should be asking every one of those congresspersons, 'What are you against?'"

Interviewed by David Gregory at Thursday's Washington Ideas Forum, Biden said the main obstacle to moving the economy forward is a fractured Republican Party that its congressional leadership is unable to control.

"I think [President Obama] does have a partner in the bulk of the leadership but they are seriously hamstsrung," Biden said. During the debt-ceiling negotiations, he said, "we had a much bigger proposal I was personally negotiating with them as to how to deal with the debt crisis and they could not sell it."

Biden said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor would deny this account because he was obligated to. "This is just Joe Biden's impression, but I truly believe if just Eric Cantor, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and John Boehner were allowed to settle the deal in the room we would have had a deal."

But the GOP has changed, he said. "My view is that their party is not the Republican Party that we all know. ... In my view, we need a strong Republican Party. We need a Republican Party that's united."

Thus, he said, "Part of what this is about is going over the heads of the Congress to the people, to their constituents, and make the case."

Biden likened the Occupy Wall Street protest to the tea party, saying both stemmed from the sentiment that corporations were being favored over the middle class.

"What is the core of that protest and why is it increasing? The core is that the bargain has been breached with the American people. The core is that the American people do not think the system is fair or on the level," Biden said.

The tea party began protesting government bailouts for the same reason, he said.

"Look, guys, the bargain is not on the level any more in the minds of the American people. The middle class is getting screwed."

Biden harshly criticized Bank of America's move to charge debit-card users a $5 monthly fee, saying it wasn't justified after the middle class bailed banks out with their tax dollars.

"At a minimum, they are incredibly tone deaf," Biden said. "And at a maximum, they are not paying their fair share of the bargain here, and middle-class people are getting killed."

The bank argues that it is only responding to new government regulations, Gregory said. Biden likened that to a teenager, forbidden to drive his parents' car, who responds, "OK, so now I've got to steal a car. I've got to get around somehow!"

"If you look at all the polls ... a clear majority of the American people blame their financial straits on the last administration. They understand what got us in this trouble," he said. "So they get it. But we're in charge, so they're looking to us to fix it, and they're frustrated and I don't blame them."

Despite all this, Biden predicted that the Obama-Biden ticket will prevail in next year's election.

STAFF: Hey, so, do you all remember
the scene in "Dave" where the -- where the guide is saying,
"Walking, walking, walking"? All right? We have the vice
president walking towards us. It's a very exciting moment, getting
to introduce the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden.

(APPLAUSE)

BIDEN: You're amazed I can walk, huh?

(LAUGHTER)

I know I'm getting older, but the fact
I can walk is news?

(LAUGHTER)

GREGORY: Well, to all those who were
expecting Brian Williams, I'm -- I'm just pinch hitting as he was
called off to -- to anchor our special report about the president,
who'll be speaking in a little while, but...

BIDEN: You mean, (inaudible) the
president than me?

GREGORY: I mean, you know.

(LAUGHTER)

I know where I am, OK?

(LAUGHTER)

BIDEN: Sorry.

(LAUGHTER)

GREGORY: Mr. Vice President, it's
good to see you.

BIDEN: It's great to see you, David.

GREGORY: There's a lot to talk about
this morning, but I'd like to start by asking you what you think the
world has lost with the passing of Steve Jobs.

BIDEN: You know, I was watching some
of the shows last night and his commencement speech in '05 at
Stanford. If you haven't seen it, you ought to see it.

But -- and someone said -- I'm
paraphrasing -- this guy democratized technology in a way that he put
in the hands of ordinary people instruments that were only heretofore
available to NASA scientists, to docs in an operating room. And he
-- he put in the hands of ordinary people the ability to do some
extraordinary things.

And I -- that struck me, that he
democratized the use of the most advanced technology on Earth. And
he -- so I think his contribution is huge. And also his attitude. I
-- watching him saying he gets up every morning, looks in the mirror,
and asks himself whether or not, "If this were the last day of
my life would I be doing what I'm doing today?" And that seemed
like how he approached life. And I think that's a hell of a good
way.

My dad said it a different way. He
used to say, "It's a lucky man or woman gets up in the morning,
puts both feet on the floor, knows what they're about to do, and
thinks it still matters." And it matters.

GREGORY: Is that democratization of
how we get news and information that he was instrumental in ushering
in, what kind of impact has that had, not just on news and
information, but on the political and policy debates in the country?

BIDEN: Well, I think it, in one
sense, it's made policy debates a little more difficult to focus and
have in a way that there's no one -- I remember when I first got
elected, 400 years ago...

(LAUGHTER)

... and David Halberstam had just
written "The Powers That Be." And I remember thinking, "My
goodness, this concentration of power -- three networks and three
outlets." And I thought to myself, you know, "This is, you
know, Halberstam's point about it should be more open."

Sometimes I wish there were only
three. I'm not being facetious. Because there was a marshaling of
the single most important issues of the day in one place where the
debate could be, a fora that was always available, that you had 70
percent of the people watching the evening news. There was -- and it
was news.

But the flip side of that is this
democratization has taken on the ability to literally bring down
governments, bring down tyranny, to fundamentally alter the way
people organize themselves.

So, on balance, it is -- it is much,
much healthier. But it does have -- I mean, there is no -- there's
no governor on any of this. There's no editor. There's no -- so a
lot of material gets out into the public sphere that is just
specious.

But my view is, and my deceased wife
used to always kid me when I'd say this, I'd say, "I have great
faith in the judgment of the American people." And she'd look
at me and say, "I wonder how much faith you'd had, had you lost
your first election?" But...

(LAUGHTER)

But I really do. I think the American
people and the people around the world are digesting this and
starting to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. So, I
think, on balance, it's overwhelmingly positive.

GREGORY: Why is the economy getting
worse?

BIDEN: The economy is getting worse
for a number of reasons. Let me be precise. It's not that it's
getting worse. It's not getting better at the rate it should get
better. And there's a number of reasons for that.

Domestically, the things that we can
control, I, quite frankly, will not surprise you to hear me say I
think that -- that playing brinksmanship with the national debt was a
serious mistake. I think that us being downgraded is a psychological
impact on the markets here and people's thinking about where we were.

It is -- it is not within our power,
but it is within our orbit that the scare, the default, the
possibility of the default of Greece, whether or not the Europeans
are going to build a firewall strong enough with a billion or a
trillion, $700 million dollars to prevent the contagion to move to
banks in France or the collapse of Italy.

There are roughly, depending on the
estimate, 30,000 to 50,000 apartment -- 50 million -- 30 million to
50 million apartment units in China that are vacant and people
worried about the real estate bubble there.

But we should focus on the things we
can control, we can now control. We can now give it a jump start by
passing this jobs bill. Every -- every -- the vast majority of the
-- of the independent validators said it would create between 1.7
million and 2 million jobs. It would increase the growth of the GDP
by up to a couple percentage points.

And, so, the things that we can
control are the things that frustrate me the most that we're not able
to get done.

GREGORY: Well, what is going to get
it done? The president's campaigning for it. We'll talk about it
later this morning. But, even though you believe you're right, you
know in this town that's not always enough.

BIDEN: No, it's not.

GREGORY: So what's going to have to
happen for it to get passed?

BIDEN: Well, I think what's going to
happen for it to get passed, I think we have to challenge -- and I,
as you've reported, I have a good personal relationship with Eric
Cantor. I like him a lot. He's smart as heck. I have a great
relationship with John Boehner. But I know what they're against. I
don't know what they're for.

And I worry whether or not -- there
was a report that Pete Sessions, the congressman from Texas, one of
the senior staff members either for him or the Republicans, said,
after the job bill was introduced, "Obama has his back to the
wall. Why should we help him now?"

Well, the reason to help him is not
him. Help the United States.

And I look at the elements of the
bill, I don't know any Republican in the past that's been against
cutting the payroll tax for businesses, as well as for employees. He
had 50 of them supporting that just a year ago, including some of the
most conservative members.

I don't know any Republican out there
who has taken a position that we shouldn't be improving the
infrastructure. I don't know any Republican out there who has taken
the position that it doesn't make sense for us to figure out a way to
get those 6 million people who are paying 6 percent on their
mortgages to pay 4 percent on their mortgages.

And, yet, I don't know what they're
against. They say it's dead on arrival. Is this, as the president
said, I thought so pointedly, and this was a month ago, to amend it
now, we have 13 months to have this campaign. We'll have all the
kinds of fights. But these folks can't wait (inaudible). How many
people do you all know who are going to go bed tonight staring at the
ceiling, literally wondering whether they're going to be in that
house next month?

GREGORY: ... and in selling this
bill. So, he's very much in campaign mode. Do you support what
Democrats are now saying, which is, "How about a surtax on the
wealthy in order to pay for it?"

BIDEN: Absolutely. Look, here --
here's what we said when we introduced that bill. We said this is
how we would pay for it, but we're open.

Look, you have-- you have
overwhelmingly, literally, in recent polls, as of yesterday,
millionaires think they should pay more. Tea party folks think
millionaires should pay more. The middle class thinks. Republicans
think. What's the problem? What is the problem?

GREGORY: All right, but this is a
argument. So, I asked you as somebody who understands tactically how
to move legislation...

BIDEN: All right.

GREGORY: ... what happens that gets
it passed?

BIDEN: What happens that gets it
passed is we have to go to the people. That's what the president has
decided to do. And I've been -- as you know, that's been sort of my
point of view for a while here.

You have a lot of folks who were
elected last time to the Congress, meaning 2010, who are in districts
where it's not going to matter.

But you have a lot of folks, like in
the state of Pennsylvania, you have five folks who are tea party
associated who represent swing districts. We should go to the
people, and we should be asking every one of those congresspersons,
"What are you against?"

The only way we're going to change
this is not -- we're not going to change it by getting the leadership
of the Republican Party to take on their membership. We're only
going to change it if we can communicate to the American people what
we're proposing is sound, reasonable and something that there's no
good reason why Republicans, who in the past have supported it, don't
support it now.

GREGORY: Does the economy slip into
recession if the federal government fails to stimulate it further?

BIDEN: I do not think the economy
slips into recession if this does not pass, but I do think it stays
sluggish and stagnant if this does not pass. Now, there is a concern
about recession and I know it's one of the things you've talked about
often on "Meet the Press" and -- and that is there is a
real concern about Europe.

We are working as hard as we can and
being interlocutors with our -- our -- our counterparts from me to
the secretary of treasury to the president and encouraging Europe to
do what they know they have to do, but it's politically very
difficult to do, to build this firewall. But -- they're -- you can
picture a worst-case scenario in the eurozone that could have a
international contagion that could be (inaudible).

GREGORY: I -- I'm reading Michael
Lewis' new book, "Boomerang," and what's interesting to me
is a -- a fundamental point he makes, which is our subprime crisis
did a lot of damage to our banks, but the government could still bail
the banks out. Here, you have countries that are actually destroying
their banking system.

(CROSSTALK)

GREGORY: Can the eurozone survive
with countries like Greece failing to meet its budget targets?

BIDEN: It -- it can, but it's going
-- this is a wrenching moment that they're going through. They --
they -- they've got to have, you know, as they say in southern
Delaware, an "altar call" here. They've got to figure
out, are they willing to take the risk needed to take to maintain
this union? And our belief is -- our belief is they can. And our
belief is they will. And our ardent hope is that they will.

But, you know, it's interesting to me,
if you read "Boomerang," and I have not read it -- I've
read -- I -- I -- I haven't even purchased it yet, but a lot of talk
about it. If you think about what our Republican friends are talking
about now, I listen to -- and he -- he really is a friend -- John
Boehner's speech to the -- I think it was in the chamber -- and he
talked about liberating the economy. The last time we liberated the
economy, we put the middle class in shackles.

The fact of the matter is everything
they're talking about are the very things that got us in trouble --
release, liberate Wall Street from the new constraints on them; talk
about how we're going to increase tax cuts for people, particularly
at the upper end. I mean, all of the things that we tried before and
the very things that got us where we are are the things that are
being proposed.

And we have to have a head-on debate
in this country about -- there's frustration that what we've done has
not totally corrected the problem, that people are still hurting.
And we understand that.

But there has to be debate here
whether we continue along the path we're talking about and make the
kind of changes that we have been unable to make, like fair
distribution of the tax burden in this -- I was just watching CNBC on
-- as I -- as I came in in the -- in the hold room and they had a
corporate guy on there talking to the -- I don't know -- Squawk Box
or whatever -- whatever the program is, saying, "You know, the
problem is" -- they were talking about corporate tax cuts.

We -- we think corporations should pay
at 28 percent and make us more competitive worldwide, but the problem
is, as this guy pointed out, he said, "Industries are paying at
35 percent, but the financial sector's paying at 20 percent."

And so, our problem now is getting
everybody to get in the game here. It's not that we're slowing up
corporate tax reform. Corporations are in disagreement because there
are going to be winners and losers. And, look, you know, we talk
about the "Buffett rule" -- I call it the "Reagan
rule," not the "Buffett rule." I -- I -- I came along
a little quote, OK?

This is Ronald Reagan, 1985. "In
theory, some of those loopholes are understandable, but in practice
they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing while
the bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary and that's crazy."
Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more -- don't you think
the -- the millionaire should pay more than the bus driver or do you
think he should pay less?

All this stuff about us talking about,
you know, class warfare. Give me a break.

GREGORY: But most millionaires do pay
more. I mean, that's...

BIDEN: Oh, no. No, look...

(CROSSTALK)

GREGORY: ... Warren Buffett's a bit
of an outlier.

BIDEN: By the way -- no, no, no.
Most millionaires -- all millionaires -- not all. The vast majority
of millionaires pay more money than the bus driver, but on a -- on a
progressive tax (inaudible), they don't pay at the rate they should
pay. And so, if you have -- what Warren Buffett was really talking
about is his effective tax rate, I think -- I forget what he said it
was -- 17, 18, 20 percent, whatever. And his secretary making 55,000
bucks or whatever it was is paying at 28 percent. That is not what
Teddy Roosevelt had in mind. That's not what has been the process
for the last 100 years.

GREGORY: Let me ask you a question
about what's happening on Wall Street right now, on the streets
outside, on Wall Street, the "Occupy Wall Street" protest
movement. Do you and the president stand in solidarity with those
protestors?

BIDEN: Look...

(LAUGHTER)

No, you know, I -- I think that's a
really fair question. Let's -- let's be honest with one another.
What is the core of that protest? And why is it increasing in terms
of the people it's attracting? The core is the bargain has been
breached with the American people. The core is the American people
do not think the system is fair or on the level. That is the core of
what you're seeing on Wall Street.

And that's what -- that's what
started, by the way, there's a lot in common with the tea party. The
tea party started, why? TARP. They thought it was unfair we're
bailing out the big guys. What are the people up there on the other
end of the political spectrum saying the same thing? Look, guys, the
bargain is not on the level anymore in the minds of the vast majority
of the American -- the middle-class is getting screwed.

GREGORY: Well, why is that? Are --
are banks the problems in this economy?

BIDEN: Banks are part of the problem
in the economy. But -- but, look, why do you think -- I know you
know, but there's this overwhelming gut reaction to Bank of America
putting a $5 fee. Now, look, the American people know -- they don't
guess -- they know the reason the CEO of the Bank of America or any
other body in that business is in the business is because they --
that guy making 50,000 bucks -- bailed him out. Bailed him out. Put
his financial security on the line when his government said, "We're
going to come up with a trillion-plus dollars to bail them out."

And then they turn around and they
say, "By the way, we're likely only projected to make seven or
eight or whatever it is -- $17 billion next year, but, you know what?
Here we're going to do. The middle-class folks, these guys with
these debit cards, are on their back, and we're going to charge them
five bucks more to use a debit card. At a minimum, they are
incredibly tone deaf. At a minimum.

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: And at a maximum, they are not
-- they are not paying their fair share of the bargain here and
middle class people are getting killed.

GREGORY: Are they not supposed to be
profitable when there are restrictions on overdraft protection and so
forth?

BIDEN: Look, that's a little bit like
saying to my kid. I say, "Look, here's the deal now. I not
only don't want you driving the car when you don't have a license and
I've now caught you and I'm stopping you from doing that." And
my son says, "Well, I can't do that anymore, so now I've got to
steal a car. I got to get around somehow."

(LAUGHTER)

You know what I mean? Come on.

(CROSSTALK)

GREGORY: Honestly, is that really --
is that really the analogy you want to make?

GREGORY: No, I know you're not
suggesting that, even though that was the analogy.

(LAUGHTER)

You're suggesting that -- that they're
wrong in seeking to make a profit in a different way based on new
regulation and you know...

BIDEN: Yes. Yes.

GREGORY: ... that there are people
who are going to hear this and say, "You see? This is the
problem with these guys. They're fundamentally anti-business."

BIDEN: Hey, guess what, 99 percent of
the American people aren't going to think that. I am not worried
about how that's going to be perceived by anybody listening to this
program.

What I am worried about is the failure
of the banks to understand that in a circumstance where it was viewed
by the Congress responding to the American people that the tax in
effect that was being placed on their purchase of goods when they, in
fact, swiped a card is now forcing them to go out there and force --
add another fee when they're already making a profit.

The question is, you can make a lot
more profit. There's a lot of things they can do. At least -- look,
at least, when -- when you're charging extra for bags on airlines,
people are really angry. But they have heard for the last 25 years
how bank -- how airlines are going bankrupt. So, they go, "I
hate this. I don't want to do it, but I guess if I don't do it the
airline's going to go bankrupt."

Nobody thinks the banks are going
bankrupt right now. All they're thinking about is, "Hey, guess
what? They're a lot more liquid than they ever were and they're not
lending any money." That's what they're thinking.

So, you can't blame the American
people for feeling an overwhelming sense of frustration at this
moment when they're hanging on by their fingernails and all of a
sudden they come along and say, "OK, even though we're going to
make a healthy profit next year, we think we have to have this
additional income coming in."

GREGORY: Let me ask you about
accountability when it comes to the economy. The president's job
approval rating stands at 42 percent.

The view of -- of his and, by
extension, your handling of the economy is pretty low. Now, either
the big efforts that you made as an administration turned the economy
around or they didn't. And they appear to not have done that.
Either you're accountable or there's only so much government can do.

BIDEN: Look, it's -- it's -- it's two
things. If you look at all the polls that you've cited before as
well, a clear majority of the American people blame their financial
straits on the last administration. They understand what got us in
this trouble. They understand it was no regulation, no documentation
loans, these wacky instruments that they're taking risk on, being
leveraged 10, 20, 30 to 1, et cetera. So, they get it.

But we're in charge. We're in charge.
So they're looking to us to fix it. And they are frustrated, and I
don't blame them. If you ever were raised in a household where
someone in the house, when a recession hit, lost their job, you
understand the frustration and anger they feel.

We are in charge. We have turned it
around. We have, but for the local -- in the last 15 months, we've
created 1.7 million jobs, not nearly enough. And it's been offset by
the failure of the Republicans to support the stimulus efforts. We
had to do counter-cyclical help for the counties and the cities and
the states.

And so they've laid off 300,000
teachers. They've laid off -- so, it, as net, is not, you know, is
-- we've taken a hit.

But I think what they understand is
they understand that we've kept it from getting extremely worse.
We've made it better, but not good enough. And I think what the 42
percent represents is how they feel. They don't think enough has
been done. And that's what, I think, is you're beginning to see
focused, David.

That's why I think we have to take
this to the American people and say, "This is what we want to
continue to do to keep us on the road." It's like the car's out
of the ditch; it's moving along, but it's only chugging along at 25
miles an hour ...

GREGORY: But...

BIDEN: And they -- and they're used
to going 60.

GREGORY: But -- I mean, that doesn't
sound like a lot of accountability, to me, to say -- because, look,
let's -- let's look at the -- look at the facts. The stimulus plan
was big and you got it passed. Health care reform was...

BIDEN: And it created -- it...

GREGORY: Well, hold on. But health
care reform, which you initially thought was a bad idea, in terms of
political capital -- later supported, of course -- that got passed.
That was sold as part of our economic security. And things have not
turned around.

BIDEN: Well...

GREGORY: So, again, there's either
limits to what government can do or you're -- you're in a position of
saying, "Look, I know we're in charge, but really it's -- it's
the other guy's fault." That's not real accountability.

BIDEN: There are limits as to how
fast government can make up for eight years of profligate spending,
no oversight, putting two wars on -- two wars on a credit card, a
health care bill on the credit card -- the -- the prescription drug
bill that had -- a tax of several trillion dollars on the credit
card. It takes time to get that done. So there are limits on how
rapidly government can work.

There are also limits on what
government can do when one party decides we're going to do nothing.
We're going to do nothing -- nothing. Let me say it again. We're
going to do nothing. What have they proposed to stimulate economic
growth, except the same exact things that, quote, "liberated"
the economy before? Get rid of Dodd-Frank. Let Wall Street go back
to its other ways. Make sure that you continue the tax cuts for the
-- matter of fact, increase tax cuts for the wealthy.

That has not worked. So, it's very
difficult, in an environment where one team says, "Not only are
we not going to compromise on moving it forward; we just think the
old method that got us here works."

And so the American people -- their
frustration is real, but, at the end of the day -- you've heard me
quote it before, David, I think, on your show. There used to be a
mayor named Kevin White in Boston. I just got elected at age 29. I
went up in my first year, at age 30, to do an event in Boston for the
Democratic Party. I'm in the hotel shaving. And Kevin White was the
phenom who got elected in '70 and, in '72, he was in trouble running
for reelection.

And the gaggle of press got him as he
came out of the mayor's office and basically said, "Well, wise
guy, hot shot, what's -- how do you feel now?" And -- much more
nicely.

And -- and he looked at them. I'll
never forget what he said. He said, "Look, don't compare me to
the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative."

(LAUGHTER)

This is about the alternative.

GREGORY: Let me -- let me ask you.
So, just to button that down, your view, as you talk about whether
the jobs bill is going to be passed, is that this president does not
have a partner among Republicans on Capitol Hill?

BIDEN: I think he does have a partner
in the bulk of the leadership, but they are seriously hamstrung.

Look, I can tell you without in any
way violating any confidence; I think John Boehner would tell you; I
think Eric Cantor would tell you, we had a much bigger proposal that
I was personally negotiating with them as to how to deal with the
debt crisis. And they could not sell it.

I believe that, if just Eric Cantor --
this is Joe Biden -- he's going to have to say no, but I'm just
telling you as straight -- I have a bad habit of saying what I
believe.

GREGORY: I don't want to get in the
way of that now.

(LAUGHTER)

BIDEN: Look, guys, I -- this is just
Joe Biden's impression -- I truly believe, if Eric Cantor, Joe Biden,
Barack Obama, John Boehner were allowed to settle a deal in the room,
we would have had a deal...

GREGORY: But that's not how it works.

BIDEN: No, it's not how it works,
which is...

GREGORY: And they're not strong
enough leaders to get it passed. Is that your view?

BIDEN: No. My view is that their
party is not the Republican Party that we all know. One of the worst
things that has happened to us, in my view, is we need a strong
Republican Party. We need a Republican Party that's united. We need
a Republican Party you can sit down with and say, "OK, this is a
deal. Can you deliver? Can you deliver on the deal?"

And so I think part of what this --
this is about is going over the heads of the Congress to the people,
to their constituents, and make the case, and for the people to
respond either to our arguments or to theirs and decide whether or
not they're going to put pressure on their congresspersons to support
this jobs bill or not.

GREGORY: You've said two things that
interest me. One is, not the Almighty, the alternative, and that
this is not a strong Republican party, not strong enough...

BIDEN: It's not a united Republican
Party.

GREGORY: OK. Is it strong enough of
a Republican Party for its nominee to beat this president?

BIDEN: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
It's strong enough to beat both of us. It's strong enough -- look --
look, no matter what the circumstance, at the end of the day, the
American people right now are -- many of them are in real trouble.
An even larger percentage have stagnant wages. And a significant
majority of the American people believe that the country is not
moving in the right direction. That is never a good place to be
going into reelection, whether it's your fault or not your fault.
It's almost sometimes irrelevant.

But what I'm counting on -- I'm
counting on what I read out there, the judgment of the American
people to decide -- they know the hole we're in; they know how far
we've come out; they're dissatisfied how fast we're going; and
they're going to have to choose whether or not the path we have set
the country on is the path that we should continue to go or we should
go back to "liberating" the economy, in the terms of...

GREGORY: The -- the president said
this week that he's an underdog. And my question is, as I asked
Valerie Jarrett yesterday, with the enthusiasm with which he was
swept into office, the tears on election night because people were so
full of hope in his leadership, how in the world did that happen,
that he became an underdog for reelection?

BIDEN: Well, look, because we --
look, let me make a comparison. When Franklin Roosevelt came into
office, we had been in flat depression for two years. No one had any
doubt about how we got there. When we got sworn in and we had the
inaugural parade and the president and I were sitting out there on
Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, afterwards, we both
walked back into the Oval. And he sat behind a desk and he jokingly
said, "Joe, we bought in too high."

(LAUGHTER)

If we had been sworn in on March the
20th, it would have been even clearer how we got where we were. But
that doesn't matter. We are in charge. We are in charge now. And
the fact of the matter is that the American people are dissatisfied
for the state of the nation at the moment. That, all by itself, is
enough to make you the underdog.

If you just look at it in statistical
terms, former presidents in positions where unemployment's been this
high have had great difficulty winning. So, it's just looking at the
facts.

But the end of the day, this ends up
being a situation where the American people are going to have to make
a choice. And our job, as -- as leaders, is to lay out clearly for
the American people, this is not a referendum. This is a choice. If
you don't like what we're doing, understand it; got it.

GREGORY: Do you prevail?

BIDEN: I think we win.

GREGORY: Who's the nominee against
you?

BIDEN: Look, I spent 30 years trying
to figure out the Democratic Party, and...

(LAUGHTER)

... and with little success, I might
add...

(LAUGHTER)

... on nominees. So I have no idea --
none.

GREGORY: Mr. Vice President, thank
you. I only wish this were Sunday morning.